


Hiding an adder

by birdroid



Series: Ask Solas entries for biowareask @ vk.com [3]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, ask entry, in dire need of beta reader, see notes - Freeform, the pairing is almost irrelevant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-18
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:55:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25977070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/birdroid/pseuds/birdroid
Summary: The Dread Wolf decides to have one final look at Thedas before starting the war, but he stumbles upon the Inquisition camp. Is it a mere coincidence or a part of his bigger scheme?
Relationships: Female Lavellan/Solas
Series: Ask Solas entries for biowareask @ vk.com [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1705687
Kudos: 2





	Hiding an adder

**Author's Note:**

> It was supposed to be a crossover piece with my favorite book, so some parts are essentially ripoffs from Invisible Monsters, but somewhere amid the process, it took a more prominent dragonagy turn. Also, I'm reading GRRM right now, and I experimented trying to adapt his language, so that must be something :D Oh, and yes: headcanons regarding Elvhen (the language). If I messed up somewhere (grammar, tenses, punctuation, or a weird choice of words), please tell me!

The morrow promised more cold than yesterday, and the threadbare coat Silentia had scooped up from the dead bandit teared up in four new places. The pallid sky spread above her head, gray as if the Maker fell another victim to the vice of smoking, and each breath had been steaming up and up and up to join it in its dullness. A black spatter of croaking rooks relieved it from afar, only to disappear on the leafless branches of an oak that grew half a mile north of the dilapidated inn they had spent the night in.

A less than joyless scenery, Silentia thought bitterly.

"Do you know what is going to happen to Thedas should my efforts turn successful?" the god asked her, strapping the reins on their garron.

"Do _you_?" she snapped back. With no gloves to protect from the biting cold, her fingers grew numbingly rigid, so she wasn't exactly in the mood for puzzles.

"Why, yes," he replied, either missing the edge in her comeback or choosing to miss it. "I am not ignorant of the consequences, nor am I unwilling to avoid them."

Be that as it may, but the Fen'Harel still had been sending his agents back and forth, silent knives to silence ones, or long tongues to rile up others; he still had been casting emerald wisps of magic into the filigreed orb making it breathe with life; he still had been calling elves to the mountain fastness of Fen'Harel Darethan, turning the ruins into an encampment, into a settlement, into a fort.

He still resolved to tear the Veil throughout Thedas.

"The first thing everyone will notice is the sky," the Fen'Harel said, stepping aside to let Leon check the hooves and bridle straps. "The sky will change color to a greener cast of blue. The Fade will satiate it with magic, and sometimes you'll be hearing voices from above. In time, you'll learn to accept them."

In time, someone will mount his head upon a pike, but go and try telling that to a god.

Leon had been fumbling with the axle under the cart bed when he asked, "So what if they start thinking it's the Maker, you know, finally talking back to them, responding to their prayers?"

"I bear no doubt they will, lethallan," the Fen'Harel replied, taken by a pleasant surprise with Leon's spark of interest in something other than bloodshed. "And neither I doubt demons will take advantage of their bewilderment." Entranced by his own vision of future, the Fen'Harel continued, "There are dark times coming. But to forge a new sword, you need to bathe the shards of the old one in fire first."

Silentia could not help thinking that maybe he should have chosen something other than a weapon for elves to succeed to. Maybe, a house. Or a farm. Or any piece of land, really. A place where you could bring up the youth and take care of the elders. A place where you could dream and hope and build and rebuild.

"My grandmother said the only good place for a blade is in its sheath," she said for the sake of argument.

He said, "No."

He said, "Such sentiments are seldom proven right, dear lethallin."

They had started across the boundless mainland of Thedas not long after the All Souls' Day celebrations dwindled down to the day-to-day drudgery in Minrathous. Heralds brought no tidings regarding the Warden's squabble, and neither spread any words about the Qunari invasion. As far as Tevinter was concerned, the world grew pleasingly still, and that had been as good a time as any to begin the guerilla campaign that Fen'Harel liked to style a libertarian revolution—or war when he felt dramatic. 

But the Dread Wolf fostered a different plan in mind.

"I wish to have one last look at the world as it is," he had announced to his inner circle then. "This isn't going to take long. I'll be back among you before the First Day."

To Priest Aharon, he'd said, "I rest upon your shoulders the wellbeing of our followers, lethallan. The magisterium must have planted spies into our ranks, and we must not yield them any room for maneuver."

To Priest Yharon, he'd said, "I've picked my companions from the most loyal and willful of our pack. You need not fret over my safety."

To Priestess Gileana, he'd said, "I know you believe I'm faring south because I still bear feelings for the Inquisitor. The feelings I may have, but in the face of the future, my heart is as unwavering as yours."

They had just crossed the ford of Perseverance when the Dread Wolf lurched up the cart. From afar, Silentia could just make out a sprawl of encampment surmounted atop a hill, large enough to hold a party two dozen strong. She could not see the banners, but the Fen'Harel's face grew dark with apprehension.

"What is it?" Leon asked, bemused by the halt.

"Do you see the colors?"

Leon squinted at the distant camp. "I see reds and whites. And a speck of funny yellow, gold like." The realization crept upon his face.

"The Inquisition," he said, nodding. The word bore a sea of meaning to each of them.

Leon was a scrawny boy with a face full of ginger freckles and a mind incomprehensive of sympathy, even to the cause. Silentia surmised he could not be any older than sixteen, and yet when the Fen'Harel found him imprisoned within a chateau cellar awaiting trial, he had already committed more crimes than the most notorious lawbreakers of the Imperium. Thieving, raiding, causing injure, murder, and even rape—the rest she simply couldn't remember. The boy's life had been forfeit—no magistrate would've given him anything other than death, so the Dread Wolf took pity of the boy and freed him. And in return, Leon had been repaying him with loyal service ever since.

Worse still, the boy was unnervingly deft with a knife, quick to evade a blade and a spell alike. One moment he could be in front of you, and the next you'd be lying in the pool of your blood with his knife thrust in your back—and only if he felt merciful at that.

"They don't know me," he said, looking at the Fen'Harel with burning eyes. "I can walk in, turn the place to cinders with the bombs, and then you—"

"Would you, please, use your gob of a brain, just for this once?" Silentia interrupted, fighting an urge to clout the boy. "They are not our allies, but there's no need for bloodshed."

"Not yet," the Dread Wolf agreed. "Leon, you will stay below. Silentia and I will ascend to the camp and offer them some of our potions, as befit a vagabond family of merchants. We will introduce ourselves, and they'll let us pass."

Leon agreed; he always did, even if reluctantly. Displeased, he slumped back against the board of the cart frame and muttered under his breath, "I will have her head. Just give me a chance, and I'll kill her and everyone she holds dear." Silentia cast a furtive glance at the Dread Wolf, but his face betrayed no reaction to the claim.

Leon continued, his expression growing darker, "I'll gut her open. I'll feed her her own cunt."

Leon said, "I will kill the Inquisitor."

Leon had always been insisting he followed the Fen'Harel out of gratitude for saving his life, but Silentia knew the only thing that kept him tight among the ranks was the ever-looming prospect of spilling blood.

They pulled up where the road had forked in two, shooting out the path that led to the camp. Silentia vaulted from her seat and froze, staring at the encampment above with apprehension. The wooden fence that ringed it was built with long spikes that crisscrossed each other at an angle that suggested little room for besieging. The cruel sharpened points looked directly at anyone approaching, and she had no doubt that should an actual siege happen, this fence will tumble down on the attackers with mighty speed.

The Dread Wolf repeated the instructions for Leon and fumbled about the cart for the sack with potions. Stopping beside Silentia, he said nothing but gave her a cautious look that promised nothing good ahead. Armed with the bag of jingling with vials, he proceeded up the road, and Silentia followed, a docile wife to a homeless peddler.

Noticing the arrival, a guard posted at the entryway asked, "Who goes there?"

Silentia lowered her eyes to let her 'husband' speak. "We are a family of traveling merchants," she heard him say. "We'd like to offer the Inquisition some of our wares."

"Hucksters then," the guard concluded, giving them a long look of disdain. "We've seen enough of your kind this week. Be on your way and trouble us with your dud trinkets no more."

Silentia heard some disturbance from behind his back, a hushed commotion. A pair of heavy boots trotted over, rasping with the gravel underfoot, and when she glanced up, she saw another man giving a command to the first one in a scarce audible, yet curt voice. Bewilderment bloomed on the first guard's face, and then both men, tense and pale, stepped aside in wordless invitation.

The Dread Wolf entered the camp ground on his own, and the Inquisition men and women froze in deep, long silence.

The camp was twice as big as it looked from below. It comprised several tents, each different in size, a hearth which doubled as kitchen place, and a row of racks with weapons. The air was thick with apprehension. Most men and women kept their eyes fixed on the Dread Wolf, but many showed interest in Silentia as well. No one had expected the unnamed companion to the god to look like a mere woman.

What's more, no one must have certainly expected the companion to be human.

One of the tents flapped open and out came the Inquisitor, quickly recognizable not only by her garish red outfit but the maimed hand as well. She spotted the pair and, saying no word, motioned them inside with a nod and slid within.

When Silentia entered, the Inquisitor had already taken a seat at an empty wooden table. To her right sat a dwarf woman, short as dwarves went, and the trait was all there was to notice about her.

The inside of the tent was close and warm, a blessing of a change to Silentia and her gloveless hands. Still, the place could use more light—apart from a couple of lit candlesticks, there was none. Everyone else must have been comfortable with the dusk, though; after all, both dwarves and elves prided on having an exceptionally sharp vision in the dark.

"To be honest, I half expected you to trick us yet again, apostate Solas," said the dwarf woman when Solas and Silentia seated themselves. "That, and your offer to have a meeting sounded extremely suspicious."

"It may have," the Dread Wolf replied. "But the intention behind my visit is genuine by nature."

"And that is what exactly?" the dwarf woman inquired with a puzzled expression.

A silence fell within the tent. The Fen'Harel leaned forward, closer to the Inquisitor, and told her something in Elvhen. The phrase sounded sympathetic, but she didn't respond. She kept staring at him with a look that was burning cold.

Small wonder she gave no reply, Silentia thought. As Dalish as she was, her knowledge of the language was limited at best, but Solas chose to address her in Arlatha Vallas Elvhen anyway, the Elvish that was in use during the decline of Arlathan-centered Elvhenan, the last true Elvhen language. Silentia wasn't fluent in it herself, but she could freely discriminate one from the other by endings of nouns alone.

"You are a valiant leader," he told the Inquisitor in the common tongue. "But even the Herald of Andraste cannot stop what is coming. I lay before you a choice. Yield, and live to see another day; or fight, and die a forgotten heroine."

Silentia intently studied the Inquisitor's face, but keeping watch of a mountain would have made a more enjoyable task. The Inquisitor finally lowered her gaze, her expression almost rueful.

"Maker be my witness, I did not wish for it to come to this," she said, standing up. The dwarf woman whistled a signal, and the whole tent suddenly swept away as if a dragon swooped by and yanked it with its claws. Silentia shut her eyes, blinded for a moment by the daylight, too bright now despite the overcast. The motion toppled the candles to the ground, extinguished. When Silentia's eyes adjusted, she and Fen'Harel were trapped in a tight circle of swords and staves.

The Inquisitor awkwardly drew out the sword with her good hand and pointed it at the Dread Wolf. "Apostate Solas, give in yourself to the Inquisition, and I promise you a just trial."

The Fen'Harel did not look pleased. His hand inched toward his chest pocket, and the Inquisitor readjusted her grip. "One wrong move, and you are a dead man," she said, her hand quavering yet her voice not.

The god nodded amenably. "I had taken in an orphaned boy. He is still waiting for me down at the crossroad. This is for him," he explained and fished a parchment fold out from the pocket. "Give it to him, Inquisitor. He will understand. He will surrender the orb to you."

The Inquisitor shouted a command to check if it's true, and a soldier confirmed. A boy, he said, all alone as the apostate stated. She snatched the fold and started to the camp entryway, but as the dwarf woman had been having them seized, she asked the Inquisitor, "Are you sure you don't need an escort?"

"He's only a boy," the Inquisitor replied. "I've faced worse than that."

 _Well_ , Silentia thought while watching her go, _if you say so._


End file.
